Sunday, April 29, 2012

Colorado further evidence Ron Paul will challenge Romney in Tampa

Things are kind of quirky in CO. Romney won 14 delegates at the 4/14 State Convention, Santorum 6 delegates and Ron Paul 2 delegates. But CO has 14 unpledged delegates according to the The Green Papers which is slightly different than the 17 unpledged delegates quoted by Tom Mullens from a Real Clear Politics article. But that's not the issue. The real issue is the alliance between the Santorum and the Ron Paul camps.

“GOP has chosen 13 Romney delegates and six Santorum delegates. The remaining 17 delegates are unpledged, meaning they are free to choose any Republican candidate for president.”
That’s technically accurate, but it begs a question from anyone even minimally curious: Who do those 17 unpledged delegates support?. According to the Real Clear article, “Many would-be delegates criticized Romney, and some dejected Santorum fans teamed with Ron Paul supporters to push what they called a 'Conservative Unity Slate' to look for a non-Romney presidential candidate.”
That is also technically accurate, but misleading. Not only did Paul and Santorum supporters “push” the Conservative Unity Slate, they got its delegates elected to go to the RNC.

Then the articles goes on to describe how 13 of the unpledged delegates are Ron Paul supporters.

Todd King of Lewis, Colorado is one of the elected delegates from that slate. King is a Ron Paul supporter and will vote for Paul for president on the first ballot in Tampa. I asked him how the 17 unpledged delegates break down. This is his statement.
“13 unpledged delegates, including me, will vote for Ron Paul on the first ballot. One unpledged delegate will vote for Santorum. The remaining three unpledged delegates, also known as the 'delegates at large,' are the state GOP Chairman, the state GOP National Committeman and the National Committeewoman. Those three will likely vote for Romney. They usually vote for the frontrunner so as not to make waves.”
King said that the Paul delegates ran unpledged in order to win the votes of Santorum supporters who understand that the delegates will vote for Paul at the RNC, but would not be legally bound to do so.

Ron Paul can defeat Romney's Colorado delegates providing that enough of Santorum's Evangelicals break for Ron Paul. This is not beyond the realm of possibility and indeed there is evidence that Evangelicals are in fact breaking for Ron Paul.